Left-wing Govt beckons for Brazil, as Bolsonaro trails rival
Brazil’s presidential election set for Monday is being contested by 11 candidates but only two stand a chance of reaching a runoff: Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
Both are political titans, and eight of 10 Brazilians will vote for one of them, according to pollster Datafolha. That leaves little space for challengers and means in lieu of fresh proposals and programmes, the two frontrunners have mostly pushed their experience and railed against each other.
The election could signal the return of the world’s fourth-largest democracy to a leftist Government after four years of far-right politics led by a President criticised for challenging democratic institutions, his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that killed nearly 700,000 people and an economic recovery that has yet to be felt by the poor.
Polls show da Silva with a commanding lead that could possibly even give him a first-round victory without any need for a runoff.
But even if that doesn’t happen, the vote itself marks an improbable political comeback for da Silva, a 76-year-old former metalworker who rose from poverty to the presidency — then just four years ago was jailed as part of a massive corruption investigation that targeted his Workers’ Party and upended Brazilian politics.
Da Silva’s conviction for corruption and money laundering sidelined him from the 2018 race that polls showed him leading, and allowed Bolsonaro — then a fringe, far-right lawmaker — to cruise to victory.
A year later, however, the Supreme Court annulled da Silva’s convictions amid accusations the judge and prosecutors manipulated the case against him.
In many ways, Monday’s vote is the race that should have been in 2018.
Throughout his campaign, da Silva has sought to remind working class voters that his 2003-2010 presidency was marked by social advancement propelled by a massive social-welfare programme that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class.
That isn’t what Bolsonaro, who frequently refers to da Silva as a “thief ” and an “ex-jailbird”, wants voters to remember.
A former army captain, Bolsonaro campaigned in 2018 on an anticorruption platform while defending a show-no-mercy approach to crimefighting, traditional family values and national pride. His 2018 slogan — “Brazil above all, God above everyone” — is back this year.
But this time around Bolsonaro’s campaign has met fresh headwinds, in part due to his Covid-19 policies that a Senate investigation said warranted criminal charges to hold him responsible for Brazil’s 685,000 pandemic deaths.
Women in particular have turned their backs on him. Many were dismayed by his apparent lack of empathy during the pandemic as he spurned vaccines and largely ignored their plight as the primary caretakers of children and the elderly while Brazil was ravaged by the virus.
In that demographic, da Silva still enjoys a 20-point lead over Bolsonaro, who has sought to improve his standing among women and others by highlighting his administration’s generous pandemic welfare programme.
But tough times remain. As elsewhere in the world, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stoked inflation and food insecurity in Latin America’s largest nation. Bolsonaro has softened the blow by lowering taxes on fuel and supporting Congress’ push to extend and increase welfare payments for millions of struggling Brazilians.
Da Silva has denounced the latter measure as a temporary fix, given it ends in December. He promises to fight hunger and poverty the way he did during his presidency, through his acclaimed Zero Hunger strategy.
His pick for running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, a centre-right former rival, was a nod to financial markets — more recently bolstered by an endorsement from a former central bank governor who highlighted sound macroeconomic policy in a previous da Silva administration.
Bolsonaro’s four years in office have also been marred by the Amazon rainforest’s worst deforestation in 15 years.
But no single Bolsonaro claim has driven moderates to rally around da Silva like the President’s insistence Brazil’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud.
His claim, for which he has offered no evidence, has raised concerns that he could reject election results and attempt to cling to power.
Last month Bolsonaro said in an interview that if he didn’t win Monday’s first round, “something abnormal has happened within the electoral court.”